I haven't played a standard game on chess.com in over a year so I am probably over rated by a 100 points due to the deflationary effect that standard ratings seem to have on Chess.com. I would like my blitz rating to correlate better with my standard rating but I just can't play blitz at the same level. I am 37 so maybe that has something to do with it.

Well, I think blitz ratings on chess.com are lower than standard. I remember seeing some chart from a survey and iirc it was maybe 100 or more points lower generally. I'm sure there are ppl with blitz higher than standard but that probably means something is out of whack a bit.

BTW we're similar ages, I'm almost 35, but I've always felt I was worse at blitz comparatively at least a bit than at longer controls. Part of it could be that my theoretical opening knowledge has never been strong for me and tactics hasn't either, although I should be better at them now after some actual training.

Wow, so I realize I haven't updated my log for 2 months or something ridiculous. I certainly have slowed down. I think it's due to a combination of being sick the last couple of weeks and the fact that my wife is expecting soon and the owner of where I work is selling the company. It's just a stressful situation and I've had a lot of stuff going on and then wanted to relax or do relaxing chess stuff (follow super tournaments) instead of setting aside blocks of hours to focus really hard.

The idea behind these custom sets is I learn it until I think I can go through the entire set quickly and accurately. More specifically, here were my test results:
1200–1220 test: 219/224 9.4s average solve time
1300–1320 test: 246/252 12.2s average solve time

I think one of my misses on each was due to a misclick (dropping a piece as I tried to move it somewhere else) but, whatever, even if they weren't that seems plenty accurate to me when solving for time. But I have thought that maybe I should do them until I miss no problems all the way through.

Yusupov:
Chapters 1–7: 113/133 (85%)

This definitely seems a bit harder than the first level of books. But, as you can kind of see, it isn't a huge jump by any means. It's supposed to be for up to 1800 elo, and I'm over 1800 USCF so one would expect this level to not be over my head. I now suspect none of the levels are over my head at all but that doesn't mean I'm not getting a lot out of working on them hard.

Amateur to IM:
Lesson 1

I got this for my birthday or something and took a quick look going through the first lesson. It's very focused on endgames and I really like the idea of doing it before I went to anything even more in-depth like the Endgame Manual.

I think I played a couple of correspondence games and 15 minutes online games (and blitz/bullet but I don't really count that) but, meh, not much actually playing chess like usual.

Chapter 8: The Centre. As a stragetic factor, important guidelines: pawn centre, strength of pieces in the centre, regrouping via the centre, correct reaction to attack on the flank.

I thought I'd have a hard time with this chapter's test. I spent a lot of time on one of the 3 star problems but got it. The other one...well, I got the correct first move but did not see the continuation. I didn't feel too bad when I saw it, the plan seemed pretty sick to me in terms of calculating it out that far for any sort of "10 minute problem".

19/21 - excellent

8-12: 1 out of 3.

Spoiler:

I was thinking 1...d5 2. e5 Nd7 although I couldn't really figure out how it was a real advantage for black but I couldn't find something I liked better. The move is 2...Ne4! with the continuation 3. Nxe4 dxe4 4. Bxe4?! Bc5! 5. c3 Bxd4 6. Qxd4 (6. cxd4 Rxc1!) Rc4 7. Qd3 Rd8 8. Qf3 Rxe4! 9. Rxe4 Na4! 10. b4 Rc8. This was Kasparov as black. The whole thing seems pretty sick to me and "out of my league" but maybe if you think about how many pieces get stacked against the white king on the h1-a8 diagonal it's the key to making it work.

So, in the last ~4 months I have done some chess stuff, quite a bit in the last couple/few weeks.

I finished two more chapters in the Yusupov book I'm on and then took a break from that. In February I became a dad and so my routine has changed a bit .

About the same time chessable launched and for whatever reason I like using and training on it ~100000% more than via chessbase or cpt or other things. So I spent a lot of time over the last 1-2 months creating repertoires and now am studying/training them. There are about 2500 positions (not counting repeated positions which I'm trying not to train) throughout my repertoires. I got better and better at keeping the lines efficient as I went so I'm sure there are a lot of earlier lines which probably are not super valuable to know. Meh, whatever.

Also, starting at the beginning of this month I've been doing 30 tactic problems a day since I plan to play in the National Open in Las Vegas again this year with family and think that's a good way to stay sharp.

So right now daily I try to do:
30 tactic problems (not hard ones, so this isn't really calculation)
300+ chessable positions
Learn ~80-100 moves in my White repertoire since I just finished it a week or so ago but need to study all the lines before they get set for spaced repetition in chessable

I really also need to play games, probably just 15+10. The few I've played in the last month have been pretty lol. I seem to miss every tactic in The Dutch involving the a2-g8 diagonal, which is not a good look for someone who plans to play that opening, lol. I also am a bit concerned my calculation is relative crap at the moment.

I should be a relative "expert" on all of these, at least in terms of knowing moves, within the next month. Obv I will not be some super-experienced master or anything. Even though my blitz and 15+10 play has been not great, it's not due to problems with playing a bunch of bad moves in the opening. The only opening issues I have are related to me making silly moves that fail tactically but are not really opening traps or anything.

Had a good lesson today but missed what could end up being my only chance of beating my coach in a blitz game. Oh well. If I just get better and play him in the future it will probably happen eventually anyway, lol.

I really ought to be taking my 1400-1420 test and moving on to 1500-1520. If it's slow at work I may try that tomorrow or the next day but more likely will shoot to take the test on Wednesday this week since hopefully by then the opening review work feels more manageable and I can sit down for the ~hour to do the test (go through all problems in the set trying to do them as quickly and as accurately as possible).

I've been sick since Thursday. Hopefully I get 100% better before I go to Las Vegas. Proactively got antibiotics as it seemed it would be a sinus infection and so far that's what it seems like. If it's viral, though, I may be screwed and not be fully better by the tournament.

Last night I also attended a lecture by none other than Johnny from the block himself. It was for players 1200–2000 and while my rating is certainly on the higher end of that, I hope I'm even higher and on the cusp of being over in terms of actual strength.

All that being said I felt super unsharp and there were a bunch of spots where he paused to have us find the best move where I certainly didn't find it. One was real, real, bad where there was a juicy N outpost and the move to play was BxN to remove the only piece that could challenge it going into a textbook monster N vs. bad B scenario for the rest of the game. I didn't even notice or think about that somehow.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and he is definitely as good a lecturer as one might expect. Topics were:
Warmup (tactics)
Autopilot
Space Gaining
Time Management
Keeping the Tension

Oh, also I found out that the night before at the weekly Action Quad (3 g/30 games), Ily Nyzhnyk showed up completely randomly. Maybe he'll move here after finishing at Webster? That would be quite the coup. Btw, the person who mentioned it said "over 2700 player"...I assumed they meant FIDe. Lol me. Oh well. Nyzhnyk is still absolutely nothing to sneeze at, dude seems like a huge beast.

Went 3.5/6. Had a ton of fun even though I can't say I "put it all together" and played up to how I probably should be able to.

Everyone I faced seemed way lower rated than me (by 100 points each at least) but it turns out most had higher ratings than listed so I ended up gaining 1 rating point. I also won a $50 gift card, which I always am illogically excited about, and bought a DGT NA, so now I have a clock that I can actually use!

This tournament has made me excited for a bunch of things (not necessarily in order):

1) How well I can play if I actually learn my opening repertoires, rather than the random moves in my opening repertoires.

2) Playing chess is actually fun, even when it's 234234234 hours and I can't remember my address after the 6th game (true story).

3) I don't have to worry about gearing up for a tournament or any other sort of pressure and can just study how/what I want to now.

4) My cousin's son (who is ~10 years younger than I am) went 3.5 in the group below me, so even with my not stellar play, it seems I do not have to overly worry about "strongest player in the family" quite yet.

Went 3.5/5 in Vegas. Lost a 5 hour game where I was a pawn down for most of it, eventually missing that my opponent could play a move (I missed that my planned response doesn't work) even though I never needed to allow it in the first place. A draw was probably holdable buuuuut, 5 hours is a lot of chess.

Interestingly, the opening was basically a disaster for me in all 6 games. I think just doing chessable didn't help me enough and now I know tons and tons of correct moves, but I never trained the lines in sequence so I kept confusing myself after thinking for several minutes and kept playing completely incorrect lines that are somewhat similar but don't really work for the position.

I felt super prepared opening-wise but each game I basically kept making worse and worse decisions each game, lol.

It's almost as if spending a year studying a ton without playing much makes it a bit confusing when you actually sit down to finally play.

I had a ton of fun, though, and spending time with my family was really great. I also purchased a DGT NA clock so I have a clock that works for the tournament next year! I've put off getting a more modern clock simply b/c the local club here has tons of clocks and I do have a first generation chronos I barely ever use for blitz anyway.

I also "won" the board I played my 6th game on, achieving a draw as black.

As for training, I still plan to do daily tactics/calculation, chessable opening study, but will get back into Yusupov where I left off and hopefully try to play more chess too.

I found this relatively easy, although I didn't get all of the exercise problems but perhaps I wasn't warmed up to seeing deflections. Only had trouble with one or two of the problems and it was mainly due to just not seeing the idea. I was a bit surprised at how quickly I got some of them.